Many technologies have been developed to determine, in real time, the current location of a device. For example, satellites in the global positioning system (GPS) transmit radio frequency signals from different positions in the space; and a GPS receiver receives the signals from the satellites and determines its position from the timing differences of the received signals. For example, a cellular communication device can determine or estimate its location based on cellular communication signals from basestations. For example, a wireless communication device can be configured to compute its location based on signals from a wireless communication access point.
The availability of location information of a mobile device allows the development of various location dependent services. For example, U.S. Pat. App. Pub. No. 2001/0027422 discloses a system configured to pay for location dependent services using a cellular phone as a payment device, where a service location provides a user requested service or goods based on the approximate geographical position of the cellular phone.
U.S. Pat. App. Pub. No. 2009/0112766, entitled “Device Including Multiple Payment Applications”, discloses a method to automatically select one or more payment applications, such as credit cards, debit cards, to use in a transaction so that the selected payment applications give the consumer an optimized benefit or benefits. The method can be implemented in portable consumer devices, such as phones. For example, a portable consumer device stores payment applications corresponding to payment cards. After the portable consumer device receives transaction information about the items being purchased from a point-of-sale device, the portable consumer device determines which of the payment applications stored in it will give the consumer the optimal benefit. For example, after receiving the transaction information, the portable consumer device determines that the consumer is purchasing groceries and then determines the payment application that provides the optimum benefit for the consumer for the current transaction.
U.S. Pat. App. Pub. No. 2013/0024371, and entitled “Electronic Offer Optimization and Redemption Apparatuses, Methods and Systems”, discloses an e-wallet account that can hold payment accounts, such as a credit card, a debit card, etc. After receiving a purchase order request via the consumer wallet device, the system determines an optimized payment card and offer selection based on the user payment card and offer selection preference data to execute a payment transaction using the optimized payment card and offer selection in response to the purchase order request.